Arrow Video, out now

Teenagers are stalked and murdered by a maniac at a town fair.

Coming right at the height of the early 80s slasher craze, David Nelson’s Death Screams ticks all the familiar boxes – naked teens, abandoned house, gory deaths, killer with a grudge – and actually elevates itself from many of its contemporary peers, not least because it throws in everything but the kitchen sink.

A couple are garrotted while making out on a motorcycle, their bodies in turn thrown into the nearby river and popping up regularly across the film. Teens attend the local carnival and start being bumped off by arrow, machete and dismemberment. With a town full of suspects, who is on the killing spree, and might we have missed an important clue along the way?

The acting is awful, the soundtrack ridiculously over the top and the killer… did we really have enough information to work this out, a cinematic sleight-of-hand trick aside? At least, unlike the previous VIPCO DVD release, the reels are in the right order! There’s a fun, 33-minute ‘making of’ feature where cast and crew share their production memories – none believing that their movie was anything more than an opportunistic cash-in, but they all had a great time. There’s also new commentaries with producer Charles Ison and special effects artist Worth Keeter moderated by filmmaker Phil Smoot, and another by podcaster The Hysteria Continues.

Verdict: A lesser-known slasher gets the Arrow HD treatment, and if it’s nude teens and bloody kills that you’re after, you won’t feel short-changed. 7/10

Nick Joy

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